A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, Volume II (of 2) eBook

the fortnight I staid after in his house; for I could
not bear to leave a town where I had two or three
very agreeable acquaintance, and one (Mons. Seguier)
whose house was filled as full of natural and artificial
curiosities, as his head is with learning and knowledge.
Here too I had an opportunity of often visiting the
Amphitheatre, the Maison Carree, (so Mons.
Seguier writes it) and the many remains of Roman monuments
so common in and about Nismes. I measured
some of the stones under which I passed to make the
tout au tour of the Amphitheatre, they were
seventeen feet in length, and two in thickness; and
most of the stones on which the spectators sat within
the area, were twelve feet long, two feet ten inches
wide, and one foot five inches deep; except only those
of the sixth row of seats from the top, and they alone
are one foot ten inches deep; probably it was on that
range the people of the highest rank took their seats,
not only for the elevation, but the best situation
for sight and security; yet one of these great stones
cannot be considered more, in comparison to the whole
building, than a single brick would be in the construction
of Hampton-Court Palace. When I had the sole
possession (and I had it often) of this vast range
of seats, where emperors, empresses, Roman knights,
and matrons, have been so often seated, to see men
die wantonly by the hands of other men, as well as
beasts for their amusement, I could not but with pleasure
reflect, how much human nature is softened since that
time; for notwithstanding the powerful prevalency of
custom and fashion, I do not think the ladies of the
present age would plume their towering heads,
and curl their borrowed hair, with that glee,
to see men murdered by missive weapons, as to die
at their feet by deeper, tho’ less visible wounds.
If, however, we have not those cruel sports, we seem
to be up with them in prodigality, and to exceed them
in luxury and licentiousness; for in Rome, not long
before the final dissolution of the state, the candidates
for public employments, in spite of the penal laws
to restrain it, bribed openly, and were chosen
sometimes by arms as well as money. In
the senate, things were conducted no better; decrees
of great consequence were made when very few senators
were present; the laws were violated by private knaves,
under the colour of public necessity; till at length,
Caesar seized the sovereign power, and tho’
he was slain, they omitted to recover their liberty,
forgetting that

“A day, an hour, of
virtuous Liberty
Is worth a whole eternity
of bondage.”Addison’s
CATO.